“I’m just full of surprises tonight.” She lifted her arms, hooked them behind her head and stretched. “I watched all those movies, drank all that wine. Ate chocolate and laughed. And cried, and sighed. All those things women do.”

Laura lowered her hands again and turned a slow, fluid pirouette that made his shirt flow up, out.

“I watched Margo talk Annie into having her nails painted, and Kate dozing off with her head on my mother’s lap. Margo nursing the baby when he woke. I loved it all so much, loved being with them. My life is them and my babies, but through it all, you were in the back of my mind. Where is Michael? Does he still want me? And I thought, we’ll see. I’ll be there when he comes home, and we’ll see if he does. If I can make him want me. Do you?”

He didn’t speak, couldn’t have. Simply crossed to her, dragged her against him and plundered. Joy and need and pleasure burst through her in one sizzling ball of heat. Her laugh was smoke, like her eyes as he pulled her to the floor.

“No, no.” Giddy now, and brave enough, she rolled on top of him. “Let me. This time. I want to see if I can.”

He was ripe to explode and pulled her down again. “Laura, for Christ’s sake—”

“Me.” She jerked back, shook her reeling head. “I want to do things to you, things that might be considered inappropriate for a woman of my station.”

He struggled to clamp down on hurry when she straddled him. “Want to use me, do you?”

Her lips quirked at the gleam in his eyes. “That’s right. Look, we scared Bongo. He’s curled up in the corner.”

“He’ll get over it. What do you want to do to me?”

“I have to figure it out.” She blew out a breath, toyed with the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve got another secret.”

“If it’s anything like the last one, it’ll probably kill me.”

“It’s not a good one.” Now her lips pouted. “Well, maybe since it turned out this way it is. Peter never ripped my clothes off.”

“Christ. Forget it, and him.”

But when he reached up, she evaded him. “I want to tell you so you’ll know. It’s kind of funny, really. We always had very appropriate sex. Not like with you.” She traced the vee above the button with a fingertip. “Always proper sex, except when we didn’t have sex at all which was most of the time and all through the last year we were married. And you know what?” She placed her hands on either side of his head and leaned down, a heavy-eyed, more-than-tipsy woman.

“What?”